


Natural Wonders

by Nyssa



Category: Starsky & Hutch - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 14:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyssa/pseuds/Nyssa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astronomical and botanical phenomena combine to facilitate Twu Wuv.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natural Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post-"Survival."

Starsky peered at his newspaper. "Looks like the big show is still on for tomorrow."

"Well, Starsk, an eclipse isn't exactly the kind of event that gets cancelled due to poor ticket sales." Hutch spoke absently, his mind elsewhere as he ran his eyes carefully over his plants. They were looking as wilted as he felt. Starsky had been watering them while he was in the hospital, but they weren't Starsky's plants. There was a unique bond between a man and his flora that other people just couldn't replicate. Sighing, he shifted his crutches awkwardly and misted a Boston fern.

"A total eclipse of the sun will occur on Thursday," Starsky read aloud, "beginning at 11:55 AM Pacific Standard Time. The phenomenon is expected to be visible up and down the West Coast, and as far east as Utah and Arizona. The sun will be totally obscured for a period of seven minutes." He glanced up. "Jeez, seven minutes in the dark."

"Don't worry about it, Starsk. You can take your Donald Duck night light to work with you to brighten your day." Hutch cackled, but it was forced. He wasn't in much of a mood for kidding around.

Starsky gave him an _Oh, man, you're really hilarious_ look. "It's just gonna be weird, that's all, dark in the middle of the day. I wonder if we'll have trouble. Y'know, looters and stuff."

Hutch shook his head and pinched a dead leaf off a spider plant. "It won't be that dark. It'll just be a twilight sort of dark, with a lot of shadows." _How fitting. Shadows on the sun, shadows on my soul_…. He snorted disdainfully at his own self-pity.

He looked toward the couch to see Starsky regarding him with suspicious eyes.

"You okay?" Starsky asked. "You're makin' funny noises."

"I'm fine," Hutch said shortly, turning back to his jungle. The Venus flytrap Kiko had given him for Christmas looked starved; naturally, Starsky wouldn't have gone near that particular plant. And Hutch hadn't fed it for weeks before his hospital stay. He'd have to find it some crickets. And of course he couldn't drive to the nursery for them with his leg the way it was. Great. Out in the bushes behind Venice Place, late at night, hobbling around with crutches and a goddamn leg cast, flashlight and Mason jar in hand, collecting bugs like an eight-year old trying to scare his sister. He glared at the flytrap. Why the hell hadn't he just quietly thrown the creepy thing out?

He felt an immediate surge of remorse. It wasn't Audrey's fault if she was a little repulsive.

"Will you get away from that thing?" Starsky said.

Hutch executed a clumsy hop backward.

"Thank you." Starsky rattled the newspaper nervously. "Jesus. I'm gonna be reading about you one of these days. Decorated Cop Missing, Believed Killed by Flesh-Eating Weed. You think that's the kinda headline I wanna see on my doorstep first thing in the morning, Hutch?"

"You'd know before that, Starsk. You'd be notified as my next of kin before it got in the papers."

Starsky folded the newspaper and tossed it aside. "You're morbid, and I'm going home. I'll call ya tomorrow, first thing."

Hutch sighed. "You could let me get some sleep, you know. I can't work and I can't run. Seems like the perfect time to sleep in."

Starsky considered. "Okay. I'll call as soon as I get to Metro. Don't do anything athletic before then. And I'll call you again when the eclipse starts." He leveled a warning finger at Hutch. "Stay away from that crotch-grabber. You can't move fast enough to escape it."

Hutch almost laughed a real laugh at that. Almost. "Flycatcher, Starsk. And I can't stay away; I have to feed her."

"Not with your beautiful body, you don't. You can stand across the room and throw flies to it."

_Beautiful body. If you mean that, Starsk, why don't you do something about it?_ He cleared his throat. "Go home, Starsky. I promise I'll steer clear of her greedy clutches."

Starsky looked slightly mollified. He headed for the door, and turned with his hand on the knob. "Hutch, if you need anything…."

_Nothing you'd want to give me, buddy_. Hutch bit his tongue before the words escaped. He modified it to, "I'll let you know. Promise."

Starsky hesitated a moment, then lifted a hand in farewell, and left.

Hutch stood at a window and watched the Torino roar away. It occurred to him that he should have pretended to be more helpless than he was. Starsky would have stayed the night again if he thought Hutch still needed him to. Then Hutch could have hauled himself out of bed in the middle of the night and hobbled painfully but quietly to the couch to watch Starsky sleep. He'd done that last night, his first night home from the hospital. It hurt a little, and not just his leg, but he did it anyway. _Typical, Hutchinson. If you're not in enough pain already, why not create a little more?_

Sometimes he really disgusted himself.

 

*****

 

Hutch was out at the curb the next day looking at his new car when the phone rang for the second time that morning. He couldn't get over how beautiful the car was. Oh, it was a heap, of course. He wasn't blind to that. But it was beautiful because it was exactly the kind of car he liked, and Starsky, who hated it, had bought it for him. He practically choked up every time he thought about that. He cherished every dent.

He heard the phone through the open window, but there was no way he could get to it in time, what with his cast and the lunchtime crowds milling around on the sidewalk waiting for the eclipse to start. He maneuvered around them as best he could, but the phone stopped ringing just as he got to the door. He looked at the clock. 11:53. If it was Starsky – and Hutch had little doubt it was – he'd call back in a minute. He lowered himself carefully to the couch and rested one hand on the table next to the phone.

Starsky called back at 11:55 on the dot. "Are you looking at it? Are you at the window where you can see it?"

Hutch picked up the phone and lurched to his kitchen window, stretching the cord to its limit. Outside, he saw soft gray shadows closing in. "Starsk, you're not looking at it without the goggles are you? I told you not to – "

"Quit bitchin', I'm wearing the damn goggles. I bought 'em, didn't I? Man, there it goes." Starsky's voice was soft with wonder. In the background, Hutch could hear scattered exclamations.

"Starsk? Where are you?"

"I'm up on the roof. You know that phone by the stairs with the long cord? A bunch of us are up here." His voice went distant for a moment. "Cap'n! Say hi to Hutch."

Dobey's gruff voice broke in. "Hutchinson, how's the leg?"

Hutch couldn't help smiling. "Okay, Captain. How's your diet?"

He could almost see Dobey's irritated frown. "Listen, you stop worrying about me and worry about getting back to work. Your partner's like a loose wheel around here without you. Driving everybody crazy – he's tapping me on the shoulder right now. Get better, you hear me?"

"Sure, Cap," Hutch said, but Starsky was already back on the line.

"Look at the shadows! It's like little pieces of dark and little pieces of light, alternating. And the sun's all black now with just a little edge of bright around it. Can you see it, Hutch? You got your goggles on?"

Hutch didn't look up. He looked down, at the crowds of people on the street below, some with eye protection, some without, pointing, staring, awestruck. They were bathed in silvery shadows that seemed to wink on and off as tiny spots of sunlight chased them about and were chased about by them. The effect, Hutch thought, was like looking up through deep, rippling water on a bright, sunny day

"Jeez, that is something. Hutch, you there?"

"Uh, yeah," Hutch replied. "It's beautiful." He ducked back inside and closed the window. He'd seen all the sun he wanted to see, black or otherwise, while he was flat on his back in that damn canyon.

But Starsky seemed to feel compelled to give him a play by play commentary. "There it goes. Moon's moving past it now. It's getting brighter again. Is it brighter where you are, Hutch?"

_Not yet, buddy, but maybe that's just me_. Aloud, Hutch said, "Hadn't you better get back to work, Starsk?"

"Man, you really know how to suck the fun out of everything, don't you?"

Hutch smiled. "Just trying to keep you out of trouble, partner."

Hutch heard a resigned sigh. "I guess it's pretty much over now, anyway. Am I still bringing dinner over tonight?"

Hutch let himself drop to the couch and shifted his bad leg onto the coffee table. "Sure, unless in the next few hours I manage to hook up with some foxy chick who's really into plaster of paris. Then I'll have to cancel."

He could hear the lopsided grin in Starsky's voice. "If that happens, I'll come over just to cheer you on."

Hutch rolled his eyes. "See you tonight, gordo."

 

*****

 

He spent the afternoon brooding and being bored. He read, he napped, he played records, he turned on the TV and turned it off again, exasperated, when he could find nothing but soap operas. His mother had called them her "stories," and would let nothing come between her and the television set when they were on. Hutch could swear the woman dying from a mysterious disease on Guiding Light was the very same one who'd been dying from a mysterious disease on Guiding Light when he'd been home from school with the chicken pox in 1956.

He tried playing his guitar, but that didn't help. He couldn't seem to remember anything but moody, melancholy songs. He worked on one of his own half-finished tunes for a while, but abandoned it when its originally cheerful, upbeat nature metamorphosed to dirge-like grimness before his very ears.

He laid the guitar aside with a frustrated mutter and slumped on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Starsky was the problem, of course. Starsky was always the problem, but it had been getting worse lately. Probably ever since Starsky had been kidnapped by Simon Marcus's people. Hutch had done a lot of soul-searching after that. And then his own brush with death had led to a lot more.

He'd had plenty of time to think about it, lying there. In between the panic attacks and bouts of hopeless dread, the surreal conversations with Sonny and the maddening one-sided radio chatter, during the endless hours of helplessness, he'd sorted out a lot of things in his mind. One of those things was the fact that he couldn't, just couldn't, keep his mouth shut any longer about – _it_. The Problem. The one damnable issue that was fucking up his otherwise fairly satisfactory life. He'd come to a firm conclusion. If he got out of this mess alive, he was going to tell Starsky. He was an honest man. It made him sick, living a lie. He was going to do it, dammit, unless he died first.

But he didn't do it. Faced with the real, living Starsky, the Starsky he saw at his bedside when he woke up, the Starsky who held his drinking cup for him, read magazines to him, sneaked a Huggy special past the nurses to him, bought him a _car_, for God's sake – he couldn't do it. He couldn't risk losing that love. Starsky's reaction might be one of amazement, embarrassment, disgust, pity, or any combination thereof, but Hutch couldn't imagine that an unruffled "Sure, babe, let's get it on" would be among the possibilities. Hell, Starsky had made a date with one of the cuter nurses while she was in the middle of taking Hutch's temperature. Starsky didn't need, or want, a fuck buddy.

So Hutch would just have to get the hell over it. Somehow.

 

*****

 

He was dozing on the couch, having lost track of the time, when pounding footsteps intruded on his dreams. He jerked awake just as the door flew open.

Starsky, brandishing a paper bag at arm's length, advanced on him with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. He practically vaulted over the coffee table and tossed the bag into Hutch's lap as though it contained radioactive material.

"Here, take it, take it! Jesus, I'm crawly all over." He accompanied the words with a full-body shudder and an expression of revulsion the like of which Hutch hadn't seen on Starsky's face since the last time Hutch had exchanged his Count Chocula for All-Bran.

"What the hell is this?" Hutch lifted the bag warily. It was very light.

"Spiders." Starsky convulsed again, and rubbed his arms as though trying to rid himself of some loathsome fungus. "And crickets and slugs. Got 'em at the nursery." At Hutch's dumbfounded expression, he jabbed a finger in the direction of the greenhouse. "That's what you feed that ugly thing, right?"

"Audrey," Hutch said. "The flytrap. Yes, that's what I feed her." He blinked up at Starsky, feeling ridiculously touched. "Thanks, buddy. That's really – that's going above and beyond, considering your, uh, phobia. It means a lot to me." Starsky didn't have to know he'd fed the flytrap the night before with the bugs he'd captured outside.

He almost thought he saw a blush beneath his partner's five o'clock shadow. "It's not a phobia," Starsky said, with a defensive little shrug. "I just hate bugs, that's all. Like any sensible person."

"You hate Audrey, too," Hutch said. Carefully, he levered himself off the couch.

Starsky shrank back. "You're not gonna feed it now, are ya?"

Hutch pretended to ponder the question. "No, no, I suppose she can wait till morning."

Starsky visibly relaxed. "Good. I'll go get our dinner out of the car. Couldn't stand to carry it and the, uh, plant food at the same time."

Hutch had been expecting Chinese take-out, or maybe burgers and fries. But Starsky came back with a box, that, when opened, revealed salad, pot roast, mashed potatoes, blueberry pie, even wine. Hutch was impressed.

"Where the hell did you get all this?" He eyed the feast with unconcealed greed as Starsky carefully shook out a cloth napkin and dropped it on his lap. "And how'd you have time for it? You just got off work an hour ago, didn't you?"

Starsky lit the last candle – _candles_, for God's sake; Hutch was starting to wonder if he was being made the butt of some elaborate joke – and sank into the chair across the table from him. "I got Dobey to let me leave a little early. I just had to go to the supermarket and get the ingredients." He gave Hutch a smug smile and took a sip of wine. "I'm really a helluva cook, Hutch. It just goes to show ya, you never know as much about your friends as you think you do. They can always surprise you."

Hutch narrowed his eyes. "Edith Dobey cooked all this, didn't she?"

Starsky's face fell. He cleared his throat. "Well, I would've cooked it. Edith just volunteered before I could, that's all. And I did buy the wine."

Hutch raised his glass reverently. "To Edith, a great lady."

"Damn right," Starsky said, and they clinked glasses.

The food was as delicious as it looked, but the best part of the meal was Starsky. Hutch had seen his partner eat thousands of times; he'd even seen him eat by candlelight. He'd seen him eat pot roast and mashed potatoes. But tonight he couldn't stop looking at him. Every swallow of wine was an opportunity to watch Starsky's Adam's apple bob tantalizingly. Every time Starsky licked his fork in an effort to ensure that no precious pie crumb escaped him, Hutch's face got warm. Every time Starsky's eyes crinkled with laughter, Hutch felt his heart contract.

He began to panic. Dammit, it was getting worse and worse. He'd told himself over and over again to forget it. He'd chanted his mantra and meditated. He'd taken cold showers. And all of the above had worked, for a while. But now….

"Hell of a thing, today, wasn't it?" Starsky said.

Hutch blinked. "Huh? Oh, yeah, great." He assumed Starsky was talking about the eclipse; he'd been too entangled in his own troublesome thoughts to pay attention to the conversation.

"That's one of the true wonders of nature, Hutch. Sure beats meat-eating plants and camping out in the woods in the middle of nowhere without a toilet or a TV. I mean, anybody can enjoy an eclipse. Long as you've got welder's goggles or one of those cardboard boxes with a hole in it, you're all set." Starsky leaned back in his chair, looking supremely content. "I knew you wouldn't wanna miss it. Nobody with a closet full of National Geographics should miss an eclipse."

Hutch pushed his chair back and rose awkwardly. "I didn't see it," he said. He grabbed for his crutches and shoved them under his arms.

Starsky's mouth fell open. "You didn't see it? Whatta you mean you didn't see it?"

"I didn't see it, okay? I looked out and saw the shadows, but I didn't look up at the sun." Hutch lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. "So what?"

"You told me on the phone you were looking at it."

Hutch felt a distinct twinge of irritation. "No, I didn't. Starsky, do you own stock in the eclipse company? Why the hell is it so important to you whether I saw it or not?"

"Because…" Starsky said, and trailed off. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. "Because I thought it was something you'd be interested in. I wanted you to be interested in something. You've been acting so – I dunno – sad, lately. Moody. That's the way you get when you're lettin' something eat at you and you won't talk about it. I thought you needed cheering up."

Hutch felt the irritation melt away, to be replaced by a painful combination of guilt and tenderness. He leaned the crutches against the wall again and slumped back down at the table. "Starsk, you bought me a car. You took care of me in the hospital, and stayed with me last night because I needed you. You fed me a great dinner, you're even feeding Audrey, for Christ's sake. If I'm not cheered up by now, it's not your fault."

"I hate it when you get that way," Starsky said, looking down at his empty plate.

Hutch sighed, and closed his eyes. "I know. I hate it, too."

"You think it would help if you got laid?"

Hutch's eyes flew open. "What?"

Starsky shrugged. "You could call Christine. I know it's been a while since you – "

"I don't want Christine," Hutch snapped, more harshly than he meant to. He liked Christine well enough, but she was much more friend than girlfriend. She'd come to see him briefly in the hospital, but otherwise he'd barely even thought of her since their aborted dinner on the day he went over the cliff.

Starsky held his hands up in a gesture of appeasement. "Okay, okay, don't get all pissy about it." He was silent for a long moment. Then he asked, "You want me?"

Hutch gaped at him. It was several seconds before he managed another "What?"

Starsky looked impatient. "Come on, come on, keep up with me here. I said, _do you want me_? Jeez, don't you understand English anymore?"

"What – what – "

"Will you quit saying that? This is a proposition, dummy." His voice softened. "The way we feel about each other, it's probably a long overdue one."

Hutch swallowed once, twice. "How – when – "

"I dunno." Starsky looked genuinely puzzled for a moment. "I guess I'd been thinking about it for a while, you know, subconsciously. And then when you disappeared…." He let the sentence trail off. "That was rough, Hutch." He looked away, past the flickering candle flames into the dimness. "That was really rough. And I thought, if we get outta this, I'm gonna ask him. I was pretty sure you'd say yes."

Hutch felt a faint trickle of offended pride struggling with an overwhelming tide of joy. "I haven't said yes _yet_, partner," he said, out of principle.

He was gratified to see a worried shadow in Starsky's eyes. "But you're gonna, aren't you?"

Hutch closed his eyes and let the tide swamp him. "Yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

He sat there, so light-headed he was afraid he'd fall if he tried to rise, until he felt something touch his knee. He opened his eyes. Starsky was kneeling in front of him, one hand resting on his good leg, the other on his cast.

"Hutch," Starsky said, "you don't think I'm just doin' this to make you feel better, do ya? Like it's gonna be some kind of pity fuck or something?"

Hutch blinked in confusion. _I don't even care if it is_, he thought wildly.

"Because it's not. You're one of those natural wonders, babe." Starsky grinned. "And you're there all the time. I don't have to wait years and wear funny glasses to see you."

Now the shock was wearing off. Hutch laughed, a crazy, delirious laugh, because he couldn't do cartwheels with his leg in a cast. "And I'm better-looking than Audrey," he said. He put out a hand and stroked Starsky's throat slowly. "And I'll swallow anything you want to feed me."

Starsky's pupils were huge in the candlelight. "Me, too," he whispered. He reached forward, toward Hutch's zipper, rested a hand on the aching bulge there, and stopped abruptly.

"That reminds me," he said. "Where'd you put that bag?"

Hutch squirmed impatiently. "Come on, Starsk – "

"Where'd you put it?"

"In the refrigerator, of course."

Starsky looked sick. "That's really disgusting."

"Starsk – "

"I'm gonna have bad dreams."

"Will you forget about the bugs?" Hutch didn't like the whine he heard in his voice, but he was getting desperate.

"You better make this good, Hutch, to make up for the nightmares." Starsky pressed gently against Hutch's denim-covered erection.

Hutch gasped. "Starsky, _please_!"

Starsky's eyes glinted. "Good manners," he said. "I love a polite partner." Carefully, he lowered Hutch's zipper, freeing the swollen cock.

And in one, swift, flytrap-like motion, he swallowed it.

Neither of them had any nightmares.


End file.
